Proxy – Andy Gracie

The installation ‘Proxy’ features a pair of almost identical robotic devices (named ‘Essence’ and ‘Possibility’) which have been designed to carry out the basic tasks involved in hunting for tardigrades and nematodes in samples of moss, lichen and earth originally taken from the natural habitat. Essence and Possibility owe much of their aesthetic and their contextual purpose to the twin Mars rovers ‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’ which have been roaming and experimenting upon the surface of the red planet since January 2004.In ‘Proxy’ we see a reversal in the normal relationships and assumed roles between humans and robots. Where normally we send robots to dangerous, inaccessible or inhospitable places, here it is the artist that has undertaken excursions to mountainous regions for the purpose of collecting samples which the robots, ‘safe’ and ‘sound’ in the gallery space, will investigate. On each occasion that ‘Proxy’ is exhibited a new sample collecting expedition is made in a geographical region related to the exhibition venue.http://hostprods.net/projects/proxy/

din is noise – S Jagannathan

* The fully open and patent free original technology in din, a Free software musical instrument exclusively for the GNU/Linux operating system.
* The almost unprecedented use of Bezier curves — the lingua franca of CAD & CG-visual effects industries — in computer sound & music for waveform generation & automation, FM & AM synthesis, key modulation, beat production, delays, loudness compression & drones.
* The use of an IRC bot — usually used to inflict harm on a target’s compromised computer — to control the sound of a remote din.
* The use of Tcl language to extend din with scripts even during a live performance.http://dinisnoise.org

UKI game level one [infect the city] designates UKI as meta-sexual viral agents to ‘gesturally” infect the city and the world.UKI , a sequel to Cheang’s cyberpunk sci-fi movie I.K.U (2000, an Uplink Tokyo production), is structured both a viral performance – live code live spam and a viral game in two levels – infect the city and enter the bionet.
I.K.U. tells the story of GENOM Corp, a net-porn enterprise who dispatches I.K.U. coders to collect orgasm data. Made into mobilephone chip, GENOM introduces orgasm on the go and makes a huge profit. In post-netcrash UKI, the data deprived I.K.U. coders are dumped on the Etrashscape where coders, twitters, networkers crush and crashed. Exchanging sex for code, code sexing code, UKI as virus emerge admist noise blast while GENOM retreats to BioNet.GENOM CORP. takes human body hostage to initiate BioNet, a network made up of microcomputing cells. With genetic engineering, the red blood cells (erythrocytes) are formatted as autonomous cellular computing units engaging in re-programming human orgasm. Code named “ORGANISMO”, GENOM is to re-invent human orgasm into “self-sustained pleasure”. Another profitable sex scheme for GENOME CORP. conspired without any precaution for damaging the biosphere.UKI game level one [infect the city] Invites the public to sign on as viral agents usingAPI Geolocation interface to spread UKI virus. This level one game is designed to mobilized UKI viral force. During the level one, the viral agents through infection rate can be upgraded tosuperagents and be advanced to game level two [enter the bionet] in which UKI virus infiltrate GENOM’s BioNet and sabotage the blood cells’ production of ORGANISMO. As a collective game, the players jointly defeat the blood cells by numbers. UKI virus aims to reclaim the lost orgasm (data). END GAME / COLLECTIVE ORGANISMO, This is love. This is not sex.http://dinisnoise.org

Streaming Experiences – Chrs Galarreta

Lecture about experiences using audio streaming techniques: audio/silence feedback on line between different places, transmission from the amazonian jungle, experimental audio practices on-line and social networks in South and Central America.

A Popular Guide to Unpopular Cinema – Aditya Zalewsk Mandayam, John Bowers

Bowers and Mandayam will present a brief history of experimental cinema in an hour-long talk, titled “A Popular Guide to Unpopular Cinema”. This shall place their movies debuting at Piksel in the broader context of cinematic and photographic history. The performance that follows, also lasting an hour, will be a piece of neostructural cinema itself.

LumiBots presentation – Mey Lean Kronemann

The lumiBots are a small swarm of autonomous, mobile robots that react to light. They can leave glowing traces which slowly fade away, so that older, darker trails are visible as well as newer, brighter ones. This way, images that consistently change are generated. The robots can follow the lines with their light sensors, and amplify them whilst preferring brighter (newer) and broader (more often used) trails.The lumiBots demonstrate how complexity evolves from simple rules and the interaction between the components of a system, a phenomenon referred to as emergence. The lumiBots make emergent effects tangible, such as the so-called Ant Colony Optimization algorithms, by visualising the principle of pheromone trails in the form of glowing trails. The lines fade away with time, just like real ant trails do.
The lumiBots trace their path with a UV LED on phosphorescent paper. The robots do not have a memory chip, nor do they learn anything, but the glowing trails can be seen as some kind of external memory. The lumiBots’ behaviour is not pre-programmed and not predictable, but it is not random either: It emerges from the interaction between the robots, the simple rules they follow, and influences from the surrounding.The robot platform was developed, designed and produced by the artist, with the assistance of Philipp Urbanz (TU Berlin). It is based on Arduino and designed to be both cheap, easy to build and supereasy to understand. The idea was to make a shield that can be attached to an Arduino board so that people who have made their first steps with Arduino can easily make their first experiences with a mobile autonomous robot.http://meyleankronemann.de/lumibots.html

Human Mobile Medium – Cristiano Rosa, Daniel Llermaly

In the presentation, Cristiano Rosa (Panetone) and Daniel Llermaly (La Golden Acapulco) will present and share some experiences and reflections that have emerged from the tours that are led by different countries of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay), and they made a different route, but with the same idea. Only in the last year they made more than 100 workshops in over 40 cities. At the completion of these workshops also add labs, live performances often accompanied by local musicians and performers.Some of the topics covered are:
– Homemade Electronic Workshops like a medium
– Demystification of tech
– Questions about uses and proprietary of tech
– Anarchy/Pirate Radio and TV transmissons
– Using the stuff supposedly obsolete
– The process of creating multipliers
– Creation of working groups
– Development of face meetings

Cube Cola Lab – Kayle Brandon CANCELLED!

We propose to present a public cola lab, starting with the raw ingredients we would deliver a set-by-step presentation/performance on the processes, labour and techniques of making this open source recipe, commenting on expertise, transparency and the politics of production. The cube cola lab would invite open participation, and discussion, finally the lab would result in the tasting of the cola produced.

SketchSpace– Egil Möller

SketchSpace is a plugin to the web based realtime collaboration software Etherpad. It enables users to collaborate on drawing (simple) vector graphics. It is especially suited for annotating existing drawings and supports “underlay” images of many formats (including pdf).

SketchSpace was developed as a project for a company in the Architecture industry, and is released under the same free software license as the rest of Etherpad.

Note: This is not the same software, nor solves the same problem, as the loosely related “StudioSketchpad” (which is also EtherPad based).

The presentation will both showcase the program and explain how it was created using the underlying technologies, esp. dojox.gfx as well as the limitations in various browsers we had to overcome to get it to work.

The Xth Sense (Marco Donnarumma 2011, present) is a new and original, biophysical interactive system based on free, open source tools. The goal is to investigate exploratory applications of biological sounds, namely muscle sounds, for musical performance and responsive milieux.Complete information and a blog documenting the research can be viewed on-line at http://res.marcodonnarumma.com/.“Everything we do is music.” John CageThe central principle underpinning the Xth Sense is not to “interface” the human body to an interactive system, but rather to approach the human body as an actual and complete instrument in itself.Augmented musical instruments and physical computing techniques are generally based on the relation user>controller>system: the performer can interact with a control interface (a physical controller or sensor systems) and modify results and/or rules of a computing system. Sometimes this approach can confine and perhaps drive the kinetic expression of a performer, leaving less room for his/her physical energy and non-verbal communication. Besides, being that often the sonic outcome of such performances is digitally synthesised, the overall performance can lack of “liveness”. The Xth Sense completely transcends the paradigm of the user interface by creating sonic matter and control data directly from the performer’s body. There’s no mediation between body movements and music because the raw sonic material originates within the fibres of the body, and the sound manipulations are driven by the different amount of energy produced by the performer.http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/xth-sense

ICECSTREAM – a new free software in the live streaming world!
Julien Ottavi & Romain Papion

Icestream is a free software for audio streaming. Icestream brings together an audio player / mixer (based on mplayer), an icecast server and Ice (a client to send audio signal to Icecast) in one intuitive GUI.by APO33 // GPL!!http://sourceforge.net/projects/icestream/

Zero Dollar Laptop – Jake Harries

The Zero Dollar Laptop project aims to change the way we all think about technology.
“The emergence of the zero dollar laptop as a key computing platform for empowering individuals, stimulating creativity, overcoming poverty and enriching our shared culture is entirely feasible without any additional research, design, or manufacture.” The Zero Dollar Laptop Manifesto, James Wallbank Sept 2007
The Zero Dollar Laptop project develops creativity, technology skills and environmental awareness. It proposes to reuse the millions of redundant laptops currently gathering dust on shelves in homes and offices across Britain and to connect people to new knowledge networks in the process; in the case of this first series of workshops, to people who are best placed to make use of the laptops and benefit from a new set of technical, and media skills.
This work changes the way we think about technology by a shift emphasis; from high-status consumer technologies to customised tools-for-the-job and smart, connected users.
Zero Dollar Laptop uses only Free and Open Source Software which extends the useful life a computer by up to 5 years.
This presentation by workshop leader Jake Harries will be about the wider project aims and specifically about the theory and practical realities of the first ZDLT project with 18 homeless people at the St.Mungos Charity for the Homeless, Kensington, London.http://www.furtherfield.org/zerodollarlaptop/

Cámara Lúcida – Christian Parsons

Camara Lucida is an open-source toolkit that lets artists, programmers and designers make ludic interfaces and digital artifacts based on real-time projection mapping over physical objects.The proposal is based on the use of the video projector as a spatial lighting device to illuminate objects with 3d real-time graphics, transforming them into interactive and playful objects.The toolkit is based on a 3d Camera-Projector system. It uses a RGBD camera (a kinect) to make a 3D representation of a scene and project graphics on top of physical objects in real-time.http://www.camara-lucida.com.ar

Re-framing the World Wide Web – August Black

In this talk, I would like to present research about how technical standards, protocols, and application programming interfaces (API) shape the aesthetic, functional, and affective nature of our most dominant mode of online communication, the World Wide Web (WWW). I examine the politically charged and contentious battle over browser market share and how this drives the seemingly “open” technical development of standards and the implementation of new features. I present a new and alternative browser prototype and communication framework called the Underweb that provides partial solutions to the problem space of the WWW. Parallel to the non-linear development dynamic of the amorphous electronic infrastructure of the WWW, the Underweb provides a more user-elegant set of technologies that gives developers and users the ability to not only read, but also to write, edit and publish in this system without third-party involvement.

Ecology of Precariousness – blablabLAB

This presentation aims to show the technologies with which the blablabLAB collective was able to build from scratch and develop Haberlandt2008, Be Your Own Souvenir! (both with Honorary Mentions at Prix Arts) and other projects with the use of open source software, reused materials and DIY building.The story behind blablabLAB, can be an inspiring example of commitment to open source and the possibilities of ideas. Starting out from Raúl’s small room in Barcelona and on a shoestring budget, first generating impossible ideas (a DIY biorreactor that at the same time is a vending machine?) and then building them and making them public. It is a chance to showcase how software and hardware developed by a global community ended up up being part of our installations.It is also an opportunity to expose the ideas behind the art itself, its urban significance and the hidden agenda regarding relations between human sprawl, cities, citizens changing from consumers to producers and the unique ecology this processes generate.

Pueblo Nómade – Alejandra Maria Perez, Guillermo Alberto Olivares

Network of micro shelters (spores) for sensorial exploration of territorial conditionsThe following project is taking into consideration architecture as an open practice that is creating value through the meeting and intersection of various practices which generate a unique spatiality. The work of architectural design may be open toward the community where a place is built, so it possible to connect built space to creative local knowledge. We understand each other as confederations of subjects in a crowd. Constituted as intersections and micro agreements of nodes and affects, architectural space rises from these meetings.
We propose to use an architectural object as a sensitive device for territorial exploration, able to draw the bio footprint of the host, its microclimate and its bodily conditions within the occupation of an architectural device (Spore)www.pueblonomade.net

Network Topology as a Site of Resistance – Nicholas Knouf

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, networks continue to be defined by their stable topology represented in an image or graph. Peer-to-peer technologies promised new arrangements absent centralized control, but they still rely on stationary devices. Mobile phones remain wedded to conventional network providers.Instead, the combination of peer-to-peer with mobility enables a new concept of an information transfer infrastructure that relies on fluid, temporary, ad-hoc networks. People and devices are at once implicated as mobile nodes in this network (known in computer science as a sneakernet).Fluid Nexus (http://fluidnexus.net) bypasses Internet intermediaries’ control over the identification and circulation of messages via the combination of short-range networking technologies such as Bluetooth and Zeroconf service discovery with the movement of people throughout the world. Fluid Nexus exists as an application for Android phones and desktop/laptop devices running Windows and Linux (with a version under development for OS X). While Fluid Nexus has been designed for use by activists and relief workers it also has much potential for new forms of hyperlocal media sharing.This presentation will detail the technical development of Fluid Nexus, namely the potentials (and pitfalls) of FLOSS mobile development, as well as explore nascent reactions to the project that highlight certain fissures within the activist community. I will also relate Fluid Nexus to a long line of hacktivist work, reaching back to the Eternal Network of the Fluxists, that aims to place network topology as a main site of contention.http://fluidnexus.net.

the 120days of *buntu – Gordan Savicic, Danja Vasiliev

The operating system of a modern computer represents an intimate interface for the user. Default systems are imposing so many rules and dogmas onto the user which make those systems very similar to our control-driven social environment. We envision the computer desktop and operating systems as a contemporary replacement for urban public space.The 120days of *buntu is a mash-up of 120 different Ubuntu operating systems (OS). Each OS is a self-contained Live CD/USB stick; any PC/Mac can be instantly booted from it. ‘The 120 days of *buntu’ project treats Operating Systems (Ubuntu Linux distributions) as public space, prone to modification by its habitants/users. The OS modification happens on all levels: from looks-and-feel of User Interface (GUI), interaction model, visual and audio feedback and down to modified system tools and hacked kernel. The project is based on the source code of the most popular Linux/GNU distribution – Ubuntu, which is reconfigured and remixed, creating a collection of 120 essentially dadaistic, yet humoristic, and at the same time useless but bootable Linux-like distributions. The systems we are creating are reflections of life situations and desktop-user experiences within the genre of software art. The 120days of *buntu incorporates the production and distribution of a user-determined OS. Following the experimental nature of this project, we deployed an alternative distribution model for our modified software. Besides the Internet, live CDs were spread through a so-called Street-Sneaker-Net, inspired by the illegal CD/DVD sellers in the streets of São Paulo, Brazil.’The 120 days of *buntu’ project exists in three different forms:
– ‘OS modification workshop’ where participants learn how to modify their Desktop environments
– ‘120buntu.com’ online community offering complete repository of our software
– ‘Exhibition setup’; comprised of all created operating system running as LIVE sessionswww.120buntu.com